The F-22 community experienced five physiological events with hypoxia-like symptoms in the month of April. Prior to that, there had been nine incidents between June 2008 and February of this year, including one in which a pilot apparently lost his life.
So the USAF is getting around to looking at potential problems with the Raptor’s OBOGS:
The Air Combat Command on May 3 temporarily halted flights of the F-22 “until further notice,” according to an e-mailed statement from the command, based at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. The Air Force has taken delivery of 160 of the stealth F-22 jets.
“The stand-down is a prudent measure following recent reports of potential oxygen system malfunctions” and gives Air Force officials time to investigate the system, the command said. The F-22 Raptor is the U.S. military’s most advanced fighter.
Fourteen incidents and a fatality in the last three years means it’s none too soon to figure this out.
LMCO’s F-35 program is hastening to distance themselves from Honeywell’s solution for their aircraft.
If the same fuse blows twice, it’s troubleshooting time. Fourteen? How do you say seems slow on the uptake, nicely? Obviously some good reason for it. What was it?
FOURTEEN! Good grief, if it happened more than twice on a Navy aircraft NAVAIR would be all over it!
“Two data points do not a trend make” comes to mind… but surely 14 does. Right? So let me get this right… nine incidents occured before the pilot died. Nine incidents. NINE. Out of a fleet of 160, which means 5% of the a/c had this problem once, assuming that they were not repeats of the same a/c.
And then someone died. Someone’s husband, father, son.
And still… more incidents were allowed to occur.
I’m struggling with this…
Well, it’s a GOOD thing we didn’t build too many of these obviously flawed machines…. /Snark off
to be honest, i’m surprised that DOD doesn’t have a pulse oximeter rigged on pilots already.
they are cheap and reliable, and could be hooked to a warning system and/or back up bottle with OTS equipment and fittings.
of course, that may be why they don’t. %-)
…Sadly, I suspect there might have been…what’s the word here…a mindset to overlook problems unless it was a showstopper. And brother, this was a showstopper.
Mike
Air Force
no need to say more……
Only too true. The AF tends to defer the the vendors a lot more than the Navy does.
Mike M.,
Without question the vendors’ feelings were in play here, but even more so were the egos and reputations of the eagles and stars who are running the program. The -22 will almost certainly be the last ‘pure’ manned fighter the USAF will ever buy, and the leadership knows that if the Raptor fails, the USAF and its pilots will take a hit they may never recover from.
Mike
MM3, hold those responsible, well, responsible.
All branches have their challenges, what is important is the actions we take to resolve those challenges.
Sadly the knee jerk reaction around here to crap/sh*t on the Zoomies at the slightest provocation appears justified….
…should be interesting to observe the predictable attempts to explain this away. Best
Interservice snarking is all in good fun… but had the Marines accumulated nine similar cases of, say, a breach-block malfunction in a new weapon that caused a dangerous hangfire, and then waited until a tenth blew up in someone’s face before acting on it, there wouldn’t be enough baskets handy to keep the heads from rolling around the testing command.
Inexplicable.